I was once a loyal customer of Diningin.com. It is a restaurant delivery service in Dallas and several other major cities. You can order online through their portal from variety of restaurants for a moderate delivery charge.
As someone who eats out 90 percent of the time, I was a regular user of their service. I used it on an average of 2 times a month. My order history shows that since January 1, 2009, I used the service 12 times. For me, it it was a great deal. The 7 dollar(rounded) delivery charge was worth it to be able to order out without the hassle of going out.
It was a great deal until they recently raised their minimum delivery order from 15 to 25 dollars. It then transitioned from a decent restaurant delivery service with an good selection of restaurants to an over-priced, sometimes flawed, delivery service with a limited selection of restaurants. At 15 dollars, I was willing to tolerate some delayed delivery and miss-filled orders. At 25 dollars I want exactly what I would get if I sat down at the restaurant. Diningin.com does not always deliver on that and if they make a mistake it is a hassle to correct once the food has left the source.
A 15 dollar price point allows you do order for one. It allows you to consider a wide variety of any of the available menu selections. At 25 dollar plus delivery fee you are forced to order for two. It forces you to limit your selection of items to reach that price point. It will ultimately hurt their quick-casual restaurants. Those that have primarily lower-mid-priced items on their menu. Items on the menu that were once big sellers at a lower cost will be bypassed just so a person can make the minimum order price. What’s more, if I am now forced to spend 50 dollars with service charge and tip to use the service, I would rather sit down somewhere to ensure good service and accurate food delivery. That’s a weekend night at a pretty good restaurant for a lot of people
One would think that such a drastic required minimum expenditure increase would spell corporate death in this terrible economy. I suspect that Diningin.com was losing money on the individual consumer orders so they decided to price those out of the business model and focus on catering and corporate. It may be a no-win scenario. Consumers are not the only ones cutting back. Corporations are also eliminating these types of discretionary expenditures. Someone there must have crunched the numbers and decided that this was the only way to go in a survival mode.
It is also possible that Diningin.com looked at the numbers and decided that I was not the type of customer they could support anymore. The single guy coming in around the minimum with each order. Maybe guys like me were sucking the life out of their profitable higher dollar revenue. It is also possible that their numbers demontrated most orders as being closer to 25 than 15 regardless. If that’s true, maybe their decision to eliminate my business was a good one. Bean counters do not always take the perception versus reality factor into account. Either way Diningin.com will never see my business again. I hope somebody steps in to fill the void.
